“Nothing new in the last year gave me as much pure reading pleasure as
pages in this book. Heilbut ranges over the culture like a madman, but
with a fierce sanity in his eye, debunking myths and erecting new ones.
I finished The Fan Who Knew Too Much wondering how, without it, I’d
ever thought I understood a thing about America in the 20th century.”
— John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

“Take in his witty, passionate prose, his uncanny blend of scholarship
and reportage, his analytic brilliance and his joie de vivre. You will be
stirred and delighted.”
— Margo Jefferson, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of On Michael Jackson

“Leapt off the shelf and refused to be put down . . . Everything I know about gospel music I’ve learned from Anthony Heilbut’s compilations and writings; thanks to his crazy compendium The Fan Who Knew Too Much, he has now, also, taught me everything I know about radio soap operas, Aretha Franklin, and homosexuality in the black church.”
— Lorin Stein, The Paris ReviewFull Review [PDF]

“Anthony Heilbut has been a guide and a mentor to me. I know of no one who has the love and depth of knowledge of this extraordinary author.”
— Paul Simon

“A remarkably bold and original examination of American culture, filled with passion, insight and scholarship. An essential work.”
— Robert Hilburn, author of Johnny Cash: The Life

“One of the most important and ingenious books of cultural criticism I’ve ever read. The first essay fairly brims with the remarkable energy of great scholarship, yoking ideas and making connections; the second is arguably the best and most informed thing I’ve ever read about Aretha. As fun to read, and think about, as it is profound.”
— Thomas Dyja, author of The Third Coast

“The intellectual command and all-over-the-place critical nimbleness on display in these essays are dazzling — they range from a minibiography of Aretha Franklin to a reflection on the high-pitched male voice in both pop and classical music to a celebration of the Austrian novelist Joseph Roth — but it is a nearly 100-page piece driven by ethical and political urgency that anchors the collection.’”
— Eric Banks, The Chicago TribuneFull Review [PDF]

“At the book’s heart, alongside the title essay, is the extended meditation on Aretha Franklin . . . the most incisive and illuminating portrait yet drawn . . . as well as a soul-searching expose on the outing of gays in the black church. These essays allow Mr. Heilbut to deploy a confessional mode that suits his elegy for a dying American art . . . [a] most profound study.”
— Eddie Dean, The Wall Street JournalFull Review [PDF]

“[Heilbut] comes at his subjects quietly and humanely, with no agenda other than to understand . . . There aren’t many fans like Heilbut, with his cataloguing ardor, his teeming frame of reference and his thirst for experience . . . Without breaking a sweat, he swings from the plight of modern academia to the enduring values of the daytime radio serial. He drops in on old favorites such as Einstein and Hannah Arendt. Throwing them all into a single volume, he gives us the thread to bind them.”
— Louis Bayard, The Washington PostFull Review [PDF]

“Surprising and deeply moving . . . Rousing and impassioned . . . Heilbut’s various obsessions are weaved through this deeply personal collection, giving it the charismatic stamp of a single man and a single mind.”
— Ian Crouch, The Boston GlobeFull Review [PDF]

“Heilbut gives gospel music back its gayness . . . Throughout the book, across art
forms, he argues that the heart is with those who have been turned out; that the center of a community and an art are in fact not at the center, but at the margin. . . . Heilbut’s generous book demonstrates that no fan can know too much, or love too much.”
— Noah Berlatsky, SlateFull Review [PDF]

“He knows the score and tells it in a style by turns tragic, bawdy, transporting, and balefully beautiful . . . With The Fan Heilbut turns his haunted fascination into a meditative reckoning with the struggle to ‘get over’ for all those who are exiled among their own people.”
— Douglas Harrison, The Gay and Lesbian ReviewFull Review [PDF]

“Nimble, expansive and conveyed with delightful panache . . . Heilbut’s work has long been distinguished by his gift for taking on polysemous topics and spinning the reader through them, gracefully and compellingly — teasing out all sorts of unexpected associations along the way. It’s a pleasure to read intellectual history where the frame of reference is so unabashedly broad and the weave of ideas so rewarding to follow . . . It’s an irresistible ride and full of discoveries.”
— George Prochnik, author of The Impossible ExileFull Review [PDF]

“Impeccably researched . . . Heilbut’s propensity for tangents and parenthetical observations occurs as a worthwhile, even endearing exercise, the mark of an author who is unabashedly passionate about his subject. He writes luminously about Thomas Mann . . . and, most touchingly, the brilliant but troubled writer Joseph Roth. Perhaps the most successful essay is its last, in which the author reveals himself as a music fan of epic proportions.”
— Iris McLister, Santa Fe New MexicanFull Review [PDF]

“Marvelously zesty, erotically frank, assumption-blasting essays . . . take us on a guided tour unlike any other through the spirals of the psyche.”
— Donna Seaman, BooklistFull Review [PDF]

“The Fan Who Knew Too Much feels like a late Beethoven string quartet, drawing on a rich career’s obsessions and paying tribute to sources of inspiration.”
— Jimmy So, The Daily BeastFull Review [PDF]

“Majestic . . .The Fan Who Knew Too Much is one of the best collections of essays to appear in many years. It is written with depth, clarity, sensitivity, wit and lyricism. It is Heilbut at his masterful and literary best.”
— Wallace Best, The Huffington PostFull Article [PDF]